Chap. V. SCENES IN THE DESERT. 505 
side of some pools of water, the slimy contents of which 
swarmed with the larvae of insects and gigantic toads, and 
of which our beasts drank with great repugnance. The 
scene around our encampment was very peculiar: the 
surface of the desert ascends towards the mountain, form- 
ing a flat elevation, from which the black gigantic mass of 
rocks lifts its pointed summit. With the elevation of the 
ground at the foot of the mountain begins the vegetation 
characteristic of the rocky desert of this part of the 
country, such as I have already described : small trees and 
inezquite bushes, various kinds of acacias, and leafless but 
yet green corchi, columns and candelabra of the saguarro. 
For the first time our beasts fed exclusively on the pods of 
the algarobbia or mezquite-beans, this region being abso- 
lutely devoid of grass. Other rocks rise from the plain 
at various distances, and, to judge from their colour and 
form, belong to different eruptive mineral substances : in 
some places black masses, as if just sprung out of the 
ground, rise straight up. On continuing our journey, 
in the evening at sunset, such a rock stood exactly in 
the centre of the ocean of light which illumined the 
western horizon, and golden beams were playing through 
an opening in the dark wall. The scene produced an 
almost theatrical effect. 
Again we travelled throughout the night, and halted in 
the morning near some pools of water, with the same dis- 
gusting appearance of larvae and toads. We continued 
our route in view of a long and steep ridge of rock, appa- 
rently consisting of piled-up blocks of syenite, or diorite, 
and arrived towards noon at the Gila-Lagoon, a deep, 
brown, brackish water of small extent, and surrounded by 
tall algarobbiae and a tolerable grass. Here we found a 
party of Pima Indians, who were busy in gathering the al- 
